Soul Sisters
by David Knight
Summary: Years ago, the Slayers were scattered thanks to HIVE. Now, Faith has a chance to put things right, only she has to do something she never thought possible.


_**Disclaimer:**__ Arrow and Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to their respective owners._

**Soul Sisters  
Chapter One: A Darhk Nightmare**

**Starling City  
May 4, 2011**

Faith Lehane hadn't seen the inside of very many courthouses. Police stations, jail cells and prisons, she had seen a lot of. Courthouses not so much. This had been pretty much the first time she had actually been on trial. She'd usually skipped this part of the judicial process and either went straight to jail or been released by the cops.

This time not so much. Hence why she had to wear an actual dress suit instead of her normal leather heavy attire, if only to keep the judge and jury from forming an unfavorable opinion of her. And all this trouble was because she'd saved someone from a vampire attack. Apparently, the noise the encounter had made prompted the neighbors to call the police. When they arrived on the scene all they caught was the aftermath of the attack and she was immediately labeled a killer and put on trial for double homicide.

Things had been pretty dire for a while; Faith had been sitting in a jail cell in Starling City with very few viable options when Dinah Laurel Lance arrived. Laurel was a legal aid attorney with CNRI, hired by the woman Faith had saved from the vampire. Somehow the woman had, without actually explaining the 'crazy' parts, gotten Laurel to believe in Faith's innocence. Laurel had easily torn apart the circumstantial evidence presented during the pre-trial, that Faith's fingerprints were not on any of the murdered victims. She'd then gone on to present the survivor's testimony which led to the judge dismissing all of the charges laid against her.

"Thank god that is over," Faith breathed once out of the courthouse.

"You can't possibly hate wearing a suit that much," Laurel said, finding some amusement in Faith's attitude.

"Suits make me think too much of lawyers," Faith muttered, before correcting herself. "High priced, elitist, prick lawyers. You're just fine."

Laurel's amusement grew. "I'll try not to be too offended by that. So, you've been acquitted. I don't suppose you'll tell me what happened that night?"

Faith shook her head. "Jane Mason is alive and god willing, she'll never have any problems of that kind ever again."

"The way she defended you in her testimony, she was just so passionate," Laurel remarked. She had looked into her witness's eyes and knew there wasn't any coercion. She had been speaking the truth. Faith wasn't the one behind the murder of her husband and friend. That was the whole reason she chose to take on this case. To help an innocent woman.

"Listen Laurel. Thank you, for helping me out here," Faith said honestly.

"Do me a favor and try not to get into trouble the next time you're in town," Laurel said, though it sounded like a joke.

Faith laughed at that. "Trouble and I have a long history. Seriously though Laurel, I owe you. I'll pay you back. I promise. Hey do you know a good place to get a drink? I'll pay for the both of us." She waited for a response and yet didn't hear anything. Instead she looked at the lawyer, whose smile had quickly faded away and become very stiff. "Laurel? Is there something wrong?"

The moment the words left her lips, Faith watched as an arrow pierced through her chest, directly where the heart was. Faith could do nothing as she knew that was a fatal shot. She could see the blood already leaking from the corners of her mouth, her eyes rolling in the back of her head.

"What? What the hell?" Faith breathed, unable to comprehend what just happened. Even as she tried to sort the matter out, Faith stood watching as Laurel's corpse fell forward, face first into the ground, yet Faith's eyes widened as she saw now clearly the man that had been behind her. He was dressed in a black suit, pale blonde hair, an imposing figure with the smile of the devil on his face. It was the one person she hated above all else on the face of the earth.

"Well, guess you really don't owe her anything, now do you Faith," Damien Darhk sneered. "You really do have a track record for broken promises."

Faith shook her head. "No, no this isn't happening. This never happened! You were never here!" She clenched her hands into fists as she stared at this man that she loathed.

Darhk, and his organization HIVE, had caused untold damage not just to her and the Slayers, but to the world. All of the lives that had been changed, the lives that had been ended at this man's hands…

"Talking about these friends?"

Faith's head snapped back, as Damien snapped his fingers and suddenly she could see them before her, lying on the ground in various states, her sister Slayers: Chloe, her back broken, her face contorted in pain; Gabriella, a piece of rebar through her chest, her eyes glazed over in death; Maria, her head separated from her body. More and more of the dead and the injured she could see starting to fill the street in front of her.

"This... this can't be real…" Faith breathed, shaken by what she was seeing. How could she be seeing them here in the streets of Starling City, years before the attack on the Castle in Scotland? How could she possibly be seeing this? The sound of a bolt of lightning striking coincided with her realization as she looked back at the smirking Damien. "You're not real. None of this is. I'm dreaming."

'Damien' chuckled, looking at her with that self absorbed, arrogance that she remembered he had about himself. "Dreaming. Not dreaming. Doesn't change the truth. And the truth is, you've just been wasting your life away."

"Wasting?" Faith growled.

"A decade of trying to atone for your sins and what have you really changed**?** Nothing!" 'Damien' sneered as he spread his arms out, a devilish grin on his face. "Whereas I plan on changing everything. The entire world is rotten and sometimes all you can do is just burn it all down and start anew."

Faith stared at him, half horrified half enraged. "What is that supposed to mean… what the hell are you talking about!" Seeing him refusing to answer, she let out a roar of hatred and rage as she lunged at him, her right fist drew back to strike him, only to go pass him as if he was a ghost. As she turned in every direction to look for him, all she could hear was his mocking laughter. "WHERE ARE YOU?!"

As if an answer to her question she heard an enormous crash in the sky. Turning to the source, her eyes went wide as she saw it.

Fire. A wall of fire as tall as the highest building. It consumed anything and everything that it touched as it advanced ever so quickly to her. She was too numb with horror to move, already knowing there was nothing that could be done.

She screamed for mere seconds, but in those seconds she could feel the searing heat burning the flesh off her bones, watching it happen to everyone around her, feel the screams of absolute pain escape her throat, until...

* * *

**Keystone City  
April 11, 2016**

She woke up with a scream, sitting upright in her bed, her clothes and sheets drenched with her own sweat.

Faith was breathing heavily; trying to shake off the effects of the nightmare she had been given. She put a hand to her head, trying to settle herself. "There's... there's no way... none of that could have happened..."

Out of reflex, she took the remote off the dresser next to her bed and turned on the TV.

"_**And repeating our late breaking story, the mass breakout at Iron Heights Prison, where nearly three dozen inmates remain at large,"**_ the news reporter stated. _**"The man responsible for the breakout has been identified as Kenneth Bender of Markovia."**_A familiar face appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. _**"Yet at his trial, the prosecution identified him as Damien Darhk, leader of a terrorist organization called HIVE. His lawyer continues to argue this is not the case as he has papers to prove…"**_

The news reporter continued speaking but Faith zoned out entirely. Her mind was simply thinking of one thing. _Damien Darhk ...in prison? How in the__hell__did we not know about that?! How could a normal human prison hold a man like him, who had access to some of the most powerful magics in the world? It doesn't make any sense!_

"_**And notable among the causalities resulting from the breakout was ADA Dinah Laurel Lance of Star City."**_ Faith's eyes snapped back to the TV hearing this, seeing a picture of a now blonde haired Laurel being shown. _**"Ms. Lance was the prosecutor in the accused's trial and initial reports are saying that he personally ended her life. We will be bringing you more information as this story continues to develop."**_

Faith turned the TV off as she now started to process everything she had seen and heard, coming to one single conclusion**: **she had been given a Slayer Dream.

Getting up out of bed, she walked to her desk where her leather jacket hung over her chair and pulled out her cell and dialed a number. "Hey. It's me. I'm calling in my favor. I need to speak to you, and you can't tell anyone else. I don't want to be sidestepped or told to wait, because if I am right about what I have to tell you, we can't afford to."

Hanging up the phone, Faith decided the first thing she needed to do was to take a shower to get rid of the sweat. She was surprised neither of the girls had woken up from her scream, but once she was showered and redressed, she'd wake them up. She was going to need their help to do the thing she hated most in this situation: research.

However, there was no way around that. There were too many questions now plaguing her mind and a dark dream that could never be.

Never.

* * *

**April 13, 2016**

Willow Rosenberg exited the cab, and after paying the driver she pulled her red hood over her head and began walking. She had gotten pretty comfortable wearing hoods in the last few years, using it as a way to just be no one in the crowd.

_Amazing what a few years can do,_ she thought ruefully to herself. The Fall was always in the back of her mind. They had spent nearly a decade building something that they had hoped would last even longer than the Watcher's Council, and in one day, they were forced to go to ground, in order to save the body and be able to one day rebuild again.

That was the lie they told themselves. They tried putting the pieces back together in the first few months after HIVE destroyed the Castle. But the devastation that Damien had left in his wake had sent shockwaves of fear throughout their ranks. What had been growing to be nearly a thousand Slayers in their network worldwide was now according to the last time she talked to Xander, barely a hundred. Buffy didn't even try to force them to stay.

And who could blame her after what she had been through?

In the end they chose to go to ground, with Xander managing and coordinating with the three member Slayer cells. All of their old safe houses and locations were abandoned; they avoided all major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston… she remembered the fit that Faith had thrown for having to abandon her hometown, the house that she had built in the three years before the Fall. She had really made something that was helping others only to be forced to watch it all burn to ashes.

She hadn't seen her or any of them physically for nearly two years. Ever since going to ground, Willow had been driven further towards magic, but not in the same way that she had as a young Wiccan in Sunnydale. It was now been driven by the need to understand how Damien Darhk could pull off the magic that he could do without even speaking. She'd found her way to Ireland, spending a year with a Druidic Sect where she learned about the Primordial energies and that they believed in a communion with the Earth, with nature itself and of the essence of life.

After that, she moved all over Europe, learning from other tenants of magic that she had known about, but had never delved into; having been so sure of her own magic as a witch that she could handle just about any magic thrown at her.

_Arrogance is something that never truly goes away, no matter how old you get, does it Rupert? _She thought somberly as she neared the building in Keystone that they had set up for the cell. Setting up the new safe houses had not been cheap and managing to maintain them required the people in the cell to actually have day jobs to make money.

The apartment complex they had picked out was a bit run down. Not exactly condemned, though compared to what everyone had once had, it was a definite step down. Yet another reason why they lost so many. Who wants to be a part of something that can't guarantee the safety of their loved ones?

It didn't take her long to walk through the doors, walking up the stairs to the third floor to arrive at Faith's apartment. She waited for a moment before giving a simple triple knock on the door. A few moments later the door opens and while it isn't Faith who opens it, it's someone she expects. "Sakura."

"Willow," the Japanese Slayer replied, letting the redhead inside, yet as Willow noticed, was keeping her from going further inside.

"Where's Faith?"

"In her room, working as we all have for the last two days," Sakura answered. "Just keep an open mind and wait till after you've talked to her. And don't freak out."

"Open mind about what?" Willow asked even as Sakura allowed her to walk past her. "And what have you been… working on?"

When Willow came here, it was under the impression she'd probably meet with Faith alone, maybe she'd catch sight of her two cell members, Sakura and Celeste. Both of them were here. But she wasn't expecting this. Seeing another cell of Slayers, working with Celeste over laptops, getting printouts from printers and were obviously connected to the internet. Worst of all was that she personally knew the leader of the other cell, as she had been one of Buffy's three personal protégés when they first started building the Slayer Organization. "Leah," she directed her attention directly towards the only other redhead in the room. "What are you doing here?"

The Irish Slayer simply gave her annoyed look. "Oh I don't know. How about actually doing something right for a change? Like trying and actually finding something on the bastard that blew everything in our lives up."

"What?" Willow mouthed only to see in the printer what appeared to be a picture of Damien Darhk. At that moment, she became flushed with anger. "Are you kidding me? You're trying to hunt him down right now over the net?!"

"Willow, you don't understand," Sakura came from behind and tried to calm her down. "Things are very different now. You need to speak Faith..."

"Oh you bet I do," Willow muttered. "We are supposed to be staying off the grid as much as possible and not using the net. HIVE could find your blind searches on Darhk just like the attempt we tried three years ago after the Fall…"

"Willow," Leah said, cutting her off, and pointing to a bedroom. "Go in that room. Look inside. Go talk to Faith. And if you feel the same way after, we'll stop."

Willow looked back to Leah, and then to all of the Slayers in her squad and in Faith's. All of them bore the same serious and determined expression. Part of her was now curious what could make them have such resolve as she walked towards the door and opened it.

What she saw inside made it very clear. "Okay... I definitely was not expecting this."

Every wall bore newspaper articles from all around the world; some about terrorist activities, some about financial crisis, others about political events. One common thread she could see from the amount of kite string and push pins, was that they were connecting to pictures of Damien Darhk. In the center of the room, Faith was pinning another article to the wall.

"I know, it's like I've gone all 'A Beautiful Mind'," she said, acknowledging that she knew Willow was in the room with her. She focused on the task at hand. "You know how much I hate doing research."

"You would rather go to the dentist and have your teeth pulled," Willow muttered, closing the door behind her as she tried to take in all of this. Her eyes drifted to another picture of Damien, this one listed him as Kenneth Bender of Markovia. It read that he had charitably help set up a new hospital in one of the poorer cities in that country nine months ago. "What in the world motivated you to do this?"

Faith turned around to face her, her expression dead serious. "Slayer Dream."

Willow couldn't help but let her eyes go wide at that revelation. "You hardly ever get the Dreams. I'm almost afraid to even ask what the dream was." She looked at the wall. "Though I can guess _who_ it's about."

Faith nodded. "Damien showed up in a perversion of an old memory of mine from my time in Starling City. He snapped his fingers and made all of the Slayers that died from the Fall appear before me, either dead or on their last legs. He told me I had wasted the last decade trying to atone, and that I had changed nothing. He went on to rant about how rotten the entire world and sometimes all you can do is just burn it all down and start anew."

"And then?"

"And then he disappeared, only for a minute later for the entire world to be consumed in fire. Everything and everyone around me burned. I burned. Nothing was spared."

The grim tone in Faith's voice gave Willow no reason to question it. She absolutely believed in the dream as its literal version. The dreams were subject to interpretation; after all, none of Buffy's dreams had turned out to be exact prophecies. But the fact that Faith's dream involved Damien Darhk… she knew that nothing good would be coming from it. "And so you called Leah and her cell to help?"

Faith shook her head. "I just had Celeste and Sakura helping me with this since I woke up in the middle of the night. Leah came in with her squad early in the morning, a few hours after we started working. They only intended to be here for a day as she prepared to move to her new safe house in California, but when she saw what we were doing she decided to stay and help. I can't really blame her. She lost her original squad in the Fall."

Willow simply nodded and looked back to Faith. "And no one else knows about this?"

"Like I said Red, I needed you to tell no one you were coming to see me," Faith replied. "I haven't told anyone else about this. Not Violet, not Donna, not even Buffy. No one. Not until I could sort it all out."

Willow looked back to the wall, staring at the picture of the hated man. She noted that he wasn't always called Damian Darhk; there were several other names that he seemed to be going by spanning a time of decades. But most of the articles were recent- within the last year, which seemed to lend more weight to the seriousness of Faith's dream. In the first few months after the fall they had tried to find anything out about Damien, but he was a ghost. No paper trail, nothing that showed he even existed, at least in public. And yet here she saw all of these articles, his picture showing even if he was using aliases. Why had he chosen now to come out in the open, seeing as he's spent decades in the shadows- especially if that rumor she heard about how managed to remain young was true.

Willow's eyes moved towards a picture at the center of the wall with Damien, one that had paper arrows and string connecting it to a picture of a blonde woman in her early thirties. "Dinah Laurel Lance?" She noticed Faith's serious expression fracture at that name. "You know her?"

Faith nodded. "Five years ago, remember that serial killing vampire I was chasing in across six different states? I finally got him in Starling City but not before he killed his ex-girlfriend's fiancé in front of her. And when the cops showed up…"

"You were the only suspect they were interested in," Willow said, surprised as this wasn't a story she had heard before. "How come you didn't contact us? We could have gotten you out of there with the connections we had with ARGUS back then."

Faith let out a chuckle. "Believe me, I would have, if the cops weren't being pricks about when I could get my one phone call. Some detective named Pike was sure I was the killer and left me in holding, bending the rules. I would have loved to see how Faraday would have gotten his ass fired." She looked back to Willow. "The victim I saved contacted CNRI and without explaining the whole supernatural angle got them to send me a public aid defender: Dinah Laurel Lance." A bit of a smirk came to her face. "You know I actually went to trial. Wore a pantsuit and everything."

Willow felt her jaw drop hearing that. "Shut up. You in a suit? Now you are just messing with me." Willow watched as Faith went to her closet, opened it and pulled out a single dark green pantsuit. Willow stared at the outfit as if it were an actual alien. "You actually kept it? I'm surprised you didn't just burn it after use, knowing your wardrobe preferences."

"She went out and bought it for me with her own money, seeing as how in court what I was wearing would give that jerk detective's case actual weight to the jury. First impressions do matter," Faith said putting it back in the closet. "But more than that, she believed I was innocent. I can count on one hand the number of strangers that have believed me without getting to know me."

"Did you keep in touch with her before the Fall?" Willow asked.

"No. After the trial, we went to a bar called Cassidy's, had a few rounds and went our own ways. I hadn't given it much thought since then," Faith replied. "That is until I had the Dream. It started out just like how was the day we walked out of the court house when the charges were dropped. I had offered her out to get a drink, but she wasn't moving. Then suddenly there is an arrow in her chest and when she falls to the ground, who do I see behind her but Damien Darhk."

Willow noted how her friend's fists were clenched. Faith and this Laurel were barely acquaintances yet she saw this strong reaction. Was it because of Darhk, or was there more to it than that.

"When I woke up after the dream, I turned on the television and saw the report about Damien breaking out of Iron Heights. Then I found out he had killed Laurel. And all I can think of is why?" Faith asked her friend, feeling as if she wanted to pull at her hair. "Why is Laurel even a part of this? She is human and a lawyer, not a witch or a supernaturally gifted individual. And why would Damien personally kill her as the reports are saying?

"Damien Darhk is a sociopath, not a psychopath. No matter what carnage that magical thief causes, there's always a reason for it," Willow replied. "Even if we can't see it."

"We need to speak to Laurel." Willow turned her head away from the wall of articles Faith had created to look at the Slayer. "She could know things about Darhk and HIVE that we know nothing about. Things that might help us actually put them in the ground."

"You do realize the one major flaw to that plan, right?" Willow asked. "Laurel is dead. There is no way to talk to her. But from this wall, I see a few things more about HIVE that we could…"

Faith overturned the table, the sound of it crashing to the ground got Willow's attention as the Dark Slayer looked intently at her. "Don't play the run around with me, Red. You are one of the most powerful witches on the planet. You were able to bring Buffy back from the dead. When you were mad with grief from losing Tara, you went to such a dark place that you tried to end the world and had the power to do it. And it's not as if I'm asking you to resurrect Laurel! You have to know some way that we can call her ghost…"

"And what? Have a séance with her? Talk to her ghost and get the answers we need?" Willow snapped back, scoffing at the mere notion of a séance. "It doesn't work like that. I can't just call down a soul from the afterlife and give the soul a corporeal form that we can interact with! That only happens in the movies!"

"Then what do you call what happened with Spike?"

"The exception to the rule," Willow stated. "I get it. This dream has rattled you**. **And I know how much you hate Damien Darhk and HIVE. We _all_ have reason to hate them. But Faith, ghosts don't communicate with the living like normal people. It's a natural law. No matter how powerful I become, I _can't_ change that."

"Damn it, Willow! You were able to call Angel's soul from the ether and put it into his body! Twice! You're seriously going to tell me that there is nothing you can..." Faith trailed off as she caught the look in Willow's eyes. A look that as soon as the redhead knew Faith had seen it she did her best to hide it. "What? What is it?"

"Nothing," Willow said simply, to which she found herself under Faith's steely glare.

"Willow, you are horrible at poker. You know that right?" Faith stated, keeping her gaze on her long time friend. "That was not a 'Nothing' look. That was a 'Ding! Lightbulb went off in my head' look!"

"It's a bad idea," Willow quickly said, hoping Faith would just accept it. This was a bad idea that she didn't want to pursue and if Faith forced her to go on, odds are she would be doing it.

Faith simply walked up to Willow until they stood almost nose to nose. Her expression deadly serious. "I have had a total of TWO Slayer Dreams in my life. The first was when I woke out of my coma sixteen years ago and the second was forty eight hours ago. I do not get The Dreams unless something monumental is going to happen; therefore no idea is a bad one unless I say so. Spill it, Red."

Letting out a long suffering sigh, Willow nodded. "Do you remember the Draconian Katra device?"

Faith blinked for a moment. "Remember it? How could I _forget_? I used it to swap bodies with Buffy back when I was still stuck heavily on the Dark Side."

"And Buffy used one to swap her soul and yours back into your respective bodies," Willow continued. "That device has a lasting side effect, which is really harmless unless you know about it."

"What side effect?"

"It makes your body more receptive to having a soul that isn't your own enter your body," Willow answered. Seeing the confusion already in Faith's eyes she continued. "By marking you with magical tattoos that would act as wards to protect your own soul, I could theoretically, for a time, allow Laurel's soul to inhabit your body."

"So how does that work? Would we both be able to talk at the same time or would I just feel her inside of me?"

"Faith," Willow interrupted. "Two souls aren't meant to inhabit the same body at the same time. The wards I would put on you would protect your soul from damage, but one soul would have to remain dormant while the other is active."

Faith nodded. "Okay, so I'll be sleeping while you question Laurel for the information. I don't see the problem with that."

Willow shook her head in frustration. "Faith, I feel I need to stress this again. The human body is not meant to what you are suggesting we try. The wards I create might protect your souls, but they aren't meant to be permanent. They will degrade over time. If we don't return Laurel's soul back to the afterlife before the wards inevitably fail, your body will give out and you will be as dead as Laurel is right now. And that's not even taking into account the morality of this plan."

"The morality?" Faith echoed incredulously. "The morality?! Willow, I watched myself play the part of Sarah Connor during the Judgment Day dream sequence! The entire world was burning all around me! I watched people burn alive! I felt my skin melt off, right before I felt my body explode! Where is the morality here in not doing this?!"

"How about the fact that Laurel is probably _in Heaven_!" Willow shouted, causing Faith to take a step back. "When I resurrected Buffy all those years ago I was so sure I was doing the right thing; that my best friend was in Hell and I was saving her. Instead I pulled her out of Heaven and she was messed up for the better part of a year! Do we really have the right to do this?" She looked on at Faith, hoping that that would be enough. "We can find another way to get the information. It might take longer, but the risk of ripping someone out of their eternal rest…"

"She died after being stabbed through the chest with an arrow."

Willow blinked, she saw the look on the Dark Slayer's face. Her resolve looked even stronger than before. "She was murdered. This isn't like it was with Buffy, who sacrificed herself for Dawn and died knowing everything was all right. Laurel was murdered. She had no time for goodbyes; no time to set anything right. It doesn't matter if you're in Heaven or not. If it was me, if I died that way, I would absolutely not be at peace, even if I managed to get into the Pearly White Gates." Her eyes now pleading with her. "Red, we need to do this."

Willow closed her eyes, her thoughts heavy as she weighed her options carefully before making her decision. "After it's done, if she's too afraid, if she's too traumatized by the restoration, I reserve the right to send her back immediately. That's the only way I'll agree to do this. We're not going to make her suffer more than she has at the end of her life."

Faith nodded once. "Fair enough. Now, what do you need to pull this off?"

**To Be Continued…**

_Author's Notes: It's been nearly four years since the producers of Arrow made the choice to kill off the Earth-1 version of Dinah Laurel Lance. I outright hated the decision at the time as I didn't think it was the proper way to go. I think the writers painted themselves into a corner by having the Grave Scene at the start of Season 4 and they had to deliver even when it wasn't the best option._

_I had been speaking to Naitch03, author of Past is Prologue (which is a great read) when that had happened. I came up with this idea and started to work on it, got some advice from him about how plan things out. However things happened in the last few years that kept me from really writing the story._

_With Crisis looming and Arrow ending, I felt like trying it once more time. I have the entire story mapped out but I can't guarantee a posting schedule. Regardless, I hope I made enough of a hook for people to enjoy reading this story and we are only just beginning._


End file.
